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Travelers to tundra environments of North America enjoy some of the wildest, most evocative landscapes on the continent. Tundra refers to cold, dry, mostly treeless ecological communities dominated mostly by ground-carpeting mosses, lichens, grasses, heath or shrubs. Whether it’s on the high shoulders of a towering mountain or the Arctic plains bordering a frigid seacoast, outdoor recreation in the tundra has an adventurous flavor all its own.

The Tundra

North America includes both Arctic and alpine tundra areas. The former lies near the treeline in the high latitudes, stretching between the boreal forest southward and the Arctic Ocean. Where Arctic tundra is latitudinal, alpine tundra is elevational -- it bridges the stunted upper reaches of conifer forest with bare rock and snowfields of the high country. Most alpine tundra in the lower 48 states is in the West – in the Rocky Mountains, the Cascades, the Sierra Nevada and the Olympic mountain range, but the highest and harshest northern Appalachian heights such as the White Mountains and Katahdin, also have some tundra ridgetops and summits.

Hiking and Backpacking

The expansive Arctic tundra country, with its sweeping river flats, terraced benches and open foothills, demands to be explored on foot. In the parks of Alaska and northern Canada, this often manifests as cross-country travel and hikers must be experienced in wilderness navigation and travel techniques. This is especially true given the surprisingly variable mosaic of landscapes that a broad swath of tundra might encompass, including vast thickets of alder, the gravel “highways” of braided rivers and the deceptively rolling treeless uplands.
By contrast, many hiking routes in the alpine tundra of the lower 48 states are laid out on defined trails to reduce damage to the fragile wildflowers and lichens from excessive tramping.

Wildlife Viewing

While Arctic and alpine tundra may seem like harsh environments, a diversity of animals make their home here year-round or seasonally. The open vistas permit long-distance wildlife observation, especially with binoculars or spotting scope. The North American Arctic tundra sometimes hosts huge numbers of large mammals such as the barren-ground caribou, which migrate in the thousands between their calving grounds and winter ranges. Shadowing these herds may be big predators like grizzly bears, gray wolves and wolverines. Though they spend much of the year on the sea-ice, polar bears do seasonally utilize tundra habitats such as Churchill, Manitoba, which is famous for its polar-bear viewing opportunities. Vast troves of birds migrate to the Arctic tundra to breed during its brief summer. In the alpine tundra, the observant hiker might spot a well-camouflaged ptarmigan, one of the few birds to spend the entire year in such environments, as well as golden eagles, ravens and mountain goats on surrounding ramparts.

River Floating

The gravelly rivers of the Arctic tundra have long provided some of the most convenient travel routes for people in this big country. Kayakers and canoeists in Aulavik National Park on Banks Island in Arctic Canada, for example, have the placid ribbon of the Thomsen River to follow, floating through beautifully remote rolling tundra. In Alaska, the Kobuk River, which heads in the wild Brooks Range, takes paddlers through a diversity of landscapes where the sharp-eyed visitor may spot grizzly bears or caribou on its banks.

Resources

About the Author

Ethan Shaw is a writer and naturalist living in Oregon. He has written extensively on outdoor recreation, ecology and earth science for outlets such as Backpacker Magazine, the Bureau of Land Management and Atlas Obscura. Shaw holds a Bachelor of Science in wildlife ecology and a graduate certificate in geographic information systems from the University of Wisconsin.

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